A Lisbon woman blasts cutbacks, rips laptops and urges a tax increase.
AUGUSTA – Angela Joyce of Lisbon cried Monday as she told state lawmakers if they allow proposed budget cuts to go through, her mother would sit all day in her chair and not move. Her mother would again try to kill herself.
Her mother, a stroke victim, would lose outpatient therapy she receives at Westside Neuro-Rehabilitation in Lewiston. After her mother suffered the stroke in 2002, she moved in with Joyce and began day therapy at Westside.
“She has made a tremendous gain. But in that process she tried to kill herself,” Joyce said. “If you take her out of Westside I do not want to look at my mother in the eye and have her tell me: ‘I want my life over.’ I’ve heard it twice and I don’t want to hear it again! If you make these cuts, that’s what I’m looking at. Don’t do it!” she pleaded while sobbing.
Joyce was one of an estimated 1,400 people who waited in lines to testify to members of the Legislature’s Appropriations and the Health and Human Services committees at the Augusta Civic Center. So many people turned out that the committees split into two rooms to facilitate crowds. Many of those who came had disabilities. Some were in wheelchairs.
Joyce said she works part time at a Lisbon school where she sees “a waste of money with laptops. I see kids kicking the computers down the hallway.”
She recently discovered while the state was proposing to cut outpatient therapy, Gov. John Baldacci was also proposing to expand the laptop programs to high schools.
“What the hell for? Stop wasting our money and give it where it needs to be,” Joyce said. “Raise the taxes. My mother needs those services.”
Tri-County service
Greg Shea of Tri-County Mental Health Services, which serves Androscoggin, Oxford, Franklin and part of Cumberland counties, said his agency would not be able to operate with the proposed reduction in outpatient rates, Shea said.
“Outpatient services for adults and kids are gone,” Shea said. The cuts would mean he’d have to lay off 76.2 out of 500 workers, and offer less or no services to 2,300 consumers, he said.
Children with serious emotional problems who are sent to residential settings would come back to the family needing the support of a trained therapist to stay in the home. But that support would be gone, Shea said.
“If you’re an Augusta Mental Health Institute graduate, you’re back in the community living on your own, maybe working. The kind of support you need to maneuver your way is outpatient services. (That’s) gone,” Shea said. “I’ve been in this job for almost 30 years. It’s never been this bad. I’m absolutely scared to death. I can’t believe the people who proposed this understand what it means.”
Donna McAvoy of Lewiston said her fiance, Jack Caswell, is disabled due to a history of strokes. Thanks to physical, occupational and speech therapy, he has regained his ability to walk and get around.
“But they’re talking about complete elimination of physical, occupational and speech therapy for adults on MaineCare,” she said. If that happens he would have to be an inpatient somewhere, “or I’d have to quit work to stay home with him.”
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